‘People will die’: UN food aid agency warns Trump cuts will see millions starve

BRUSSELS — The world’s largest food aid organization is being financially gutted at a time when it’s needed most.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which helps feed more than 100 million people worldwide, is scrambling to plug a multi-billion-dollar funding gap after its historically largest donor — the United States — froze foreign aid and slashed humanitarian budgets. Other Western donor countries are not stepping in to fill the void.

The funding cuts come as global hunger levels surge, with WFP warning that acute food insecurity now affects 343 million people in 74 countries. The budget crisis is forcing WFP to make previously “unthinkable choices,” including cutting food assistance for people on the brink of starvation, according to Carl Skau, the agency’s deputy executive director.

“In the past, we had to cut food aid to people who were hungry but not yet starving. Now we’re forced to cut assistance even for those facing starvation,” Skau told POLITICO in an interview during a visit in Brussels.

“That means people will die.”

Funding gap widens

WFP is led by Cindy McCain, the wife of late U.S. Senator John McCain. A longtime Republican who endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020, she now finds herself navigating one of the agency’s worst funding crises as President Donald Trump’s administration pulls back aid.

Skau, a Swedish career diplomat who joined WFP in 2023, has been at the fore of the agency’s efforts to secure emergency funding.

The U.S. has traditionally been WFP’s largest donor, contributing $4.5 billion in 2024. However, aid freezes and shifting priorities under Trump have led to a sharp decline in support from Washington. 

WFP had requested $21.1 billion from all donors in 2024 to assist 150 million food-insecure people, but received less than half that amount. The situation has deteriorated further in 2025, with projected funding of just $8.8 billion against a $16.9 billion need. Shortfalls existed before Trump’s aid freezes, but have since been exacerbated by them.

Meanwhile, the number of acutely food-insecure people has surged almost 80 percent since 2021 — from 193 million to 343 million.

“Now we have a 40 percent drop in our funding this year — that equation doesn’t match,”  Skau said.

Nowhere is the crisis more severe than in Gaza, where 1.1 million people are facing starvation — the highest concentration of IPC5-level food insecurity anywhere in the world, according to WFP. But with its budget under strain, the agency has struggled to scale up aid deliveries.

Syria is another major flashpoint. After 14 years of conflict, half of the country’s population remains food insecure, yet WFP has been unable to expand assistance. Skau spoke with POLITICO after the European Union and its partners on Monday touted an additional €5.8 billion in aid for Damascus, the first major pledge since the country entered a fragile transition.

Much of this funding, however, appears earmarked for long-term reconstruction rather than for urgent food relief. Without immediate support, Skau warned, recovery efforts could fail before they even begin. 

“We might not even come to that point unless we provide some urgent relief,” he said. “We have the capacity, we have offices throughout the country … If you give us a dollar today, we can do things tomorrow. But we don’t have enough funds.”

The Trump administration’s foreign aid overhaul has thrown the broader humanitarian community into chaos.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative spearheaded by tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk, has effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to massive layoffs and the closure of critical food and development programs. A federal judge ruled this week that DOGE’s actions “likely violated the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways,” but stopped short of reversing the cuts.

With money running low, WFP is making deep cuts to its programs. Food rations have been slashed for refugees in Bangladesh, Kenya and Djibouti. The agency has closed its South Africa office, laid off staff and frozen hiring at its headquarters in Rome. In Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, rations reductions sparked violent protests, with police firing live ammunition to disperse demonstrators. 

Europe follows Trump’s lead

The Rome-based WFP is not the only U.N. agency facing a budget reckoning. Its counterpart, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has also been forced to suspend projects after losing about $300 million in annual funding from Washington.

As U.S. aid plummets, the European Union is under pressure to fill the gap. But instead of stepping up, some of its largest donor countries are following Washington’s lead and cutting back.

France, Sweden and Finland are slashing foreign aid budgets, while Germany is weighing whether to redirect funding toward migration control and trade priorities​. In several countries, new right-wing coalitions have been shifting resources away from humanitarian programs and toward deportation policies, mirroring Trump’s approach​. At the same time, the European Union is retooling development aid as a geopolitical lever — redirecting funds toward security, trade and Europe’s own strategic priorities.

Some European lawmakers have called on the EU to take a leadership role in global development, warning that the USAID freeze could create a power vacuum for Russia and China to exploit​. But European officials admit that the bloc “cannot shoulder this burden alone.”

Germany remains an outlier — for now.

Last year, Berlin disbursed nearly $38 billion in foreign aid, putting it on track to surpass the U.S. for the first time since 1960, according to reporting by Devex.

But the next Berlin government — which will likely be led by the center-right Christian Democratic Union after it won last month’s general election — has already signaled a shift toward cutting back foreign assistance in favor of migration management.